


We'll be holding on forever

by zipadeea



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Edward Elric, and finally starts dealing with grief, ed learns a lesson, hohenheim loved his kids a whole lot, promised day au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 17:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15296043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zipadeea/pseuds/zipadeea
Summary: "Hohenheim left them to save the world. But Dad loved them more than everything in the world."AU where Alphonse gets his body back a little earlier on the Promised Day.It changes nothing.It changes everything.





	We'll be holding on forever

**Author's Note:**

> AU just stems from the idea that Al got his body back that first time he goes to the gate on the Promised Day, before they were all sacrificed. So, then Ed gets his arm back earlier, but I'm like basing this story around the fact that Ed doesn't exactly win as easily as he does against Father because he knows Al's alive so he's not completely fueled by fear and desperation. 
> 
> Yeah. Maybe a stretch. But I also just needed better closure for Ed and Hohenheim. Hohenheim left when they were children yes, and that was bad and sad but HE LEFT TO SAVE THE WORLD OKAY? He's a good person. He also like, sometimes hugged his kids, in my head anyway. And if Ed wasn't there in canon, Hohenheim totally would've used his philosopher's stone to bring Al back. The only reason he didn't was because he loved and believed in Ed. Okay? Okay. 
> 
> Anyway, here ya go.

When Ed wakes, everything is burning.

For a moment, he’s convinced the blind Mustang must have accidently hit him during the battle, he has to be a human torch, that’s the only explanation for this scorching pain. There are probably children gathering to roast marshmallows over him because his insides are licked with pure _agony_ and his brain is absolutely melting.

He opens his eyes and sees a blue sky, not flames and smoke and char.

Then he sees gold.

“Edward,” Hohenheim gasps, pulling Ed gently into his lap. Ed would scream, but the fire and smoke inside his body has left his voice a croak. “Oh, _Edward_.”

Ed attempts to look down, to see what remains of his body after the fire that has most certainly ravaged it, but Hohenheim’s soft but firm hand cups under his head to keep him from seeing.

“It’s alright,” Hohenheim whispers. “It’s alright, I’ll fix it. I have enough left to fix you--,”

“N-no,” Edward moans. “No, n-no, no stones, w-we promised, we—no stones, you can’t, please _no_ ,” Because he can’t. Ed can’t take it, all these innocent people whose lives, whose souls have been trapped and wasted. He can’t steal them, he can’t take them for his own gain and force them to die a second death. He can’t live with that burden.

He’d rather die instead.

He _will_ die instead.

Shit. _Shit_.

Based on the quiet surrounding them, Ed must’ve done at least one thing right today. The Father is gone.

But Ed seems soon to follow.

“Ed--,” Hohenheim begs, golden eyes wide. His glasses have vanished.

He looks like he’s going to cry.

“Al—where is, w-where’s Alphonse?” Ed asks desperately. Where is his beautiful, whole and human brother who had been so shockingly, so miraculously and horrifyingly thrown back into his body before being used as a sacrifice? His brittle and tiny, now achingly breakable brother, naked but for the red coat Ed had wrapped as tightly as he could around him, before he’d settled him in the blind colonel’s arms and left to fight again.

“He’s with the colonel and the lieutenant,” Hohenheim explains gently. “They’re trying to wake him up.”

And suddenly, Ed can’t breathe.

“Shhhh, shhh, no, Ed, no, I’m sorry, Al’s fine, he’s fine, he just passed out. They’re trying to get medics through the blockade to take him to hospital but--,” Hohenheim pauses, as though he can’t bear to say the rest aloud. But Ed understands.

They want Al to wake up now, to give him the chance to say goodbye.  

To say goodbye to _Ed_.

Because by the time those medics make it through the blockade, Ed will already be gone.

“L-let him sleep,” Ed whispers, shutting his eyes as the tears well. “He can sleep n-now. Let him sleep.” And Ed can cry, because now Al can do that, too.

Familiar callused thumbs wipe the tears away.

“Y-you take care of him this time,” Ed growls as best he can, opening his eyes and meeting their match. “You can’t leave, I—I don’t care how important it is, h-he’s gonna need you. You can’t leave.”

Not again. Not like he left them.

Not like he left him. 

Hohenheim bows his head, the hand not still on Ed’s cheek running gently through Ed’s hair.

“Have I ever told you about the day you were born?” Hohenheim asks lightly, like he regularly regales Ed with tales of his childhood instead of the radio silence that has defined their relationship for the past decade.

Ed swallows thickly and turns his head into Hohenheim’s side, trying uselessly to escape the pain lighting up his broken body.

“It was early, almost five weeks before we were expecting you. There’d been heavy rains for three days straight, all the roads were flooded over. The phone lines were down; we couldn’t reach the Rockbells. The only reason we were safe in the house was because of the hill.”

Hohenheim’s voice is a pleasant rumble that Ed can feel in his chest, and he’s holding Ed tightly, cradling him like the child Ed never got to stay.

It reminds Ed of a simpler time, a happier one, when Hohenheim would pull Ed up to sit with him in the armchair by the fire, and read aloud to him from his textbooks or Ed’s fairy tale anthology, his free hand always brushing through Ed’s hair or scratching his back, lulling Ed to sleep.

The parallel leaves Ed breathless for a moment; one last story.

The story of the beginning, here at the end.

Ed misses the armchair.

“I’d never been more scared,” Hohenheim whispers, “I’d studed biology and anatomy, even alkahestry extensively, of course, and I’d assisted in some births before. But it’s different, Ed, it’s so different when the person screaming in pain is the one you love most in the world.

“I saw your feet coming out first, and I knew we were in trouble. For a few minutes, I considered simply cutting you out, and healing your mother after. And then--,” Hohenheim pauses. “Then Marta told me what to do.”

Ed bites his lip so hard he tastes even more blood. Hohenheim grips Edward’s hand, his new hand, his _flesh_ hand, and keeps talking.

“Marta was a midwife in Xerxes, one of the best. She told me when I should have your mother to push, told me how to pull you out and make sure the cord wasn’t wrapped around your neck. Marta told me where and how hard to pat you on the back and flick you on the foot when you didn’t come out crying. And George, George told me where to cut the cord, just as he’d done for his seven children. And Lillian, she told me how to settle you at your mother’s breast so you could eat for the first time. Just as she’d been doing for her baby the day they died.

“I’ve lived a long time, Edward and I’ve seen some truly horrible things. Death and famine, plagues and wars and heartbreak. But I’ve seen so many wondrous things, too, Edward, so many beautiful things that made all the bad worth it. And nothing I’ve seen in all my years will ever compare to watching your mother _become_ a mother and hold you for the first time. It’s the most breathtaking, the most awesome and glorious thing I will ever see.”

Hohenheim is crying, fat tears rolling down his cheeks and making his golden eyes shine.

Ed doesn’t remember ever seeing him cry before.

But now, _now_ Ed knows Hohenheim wasn’t scowling in the singular, grainy family photo that Mom had clutched to her heart as she died.

He was weeping. Just as he is now.   

“These souls in me, Edward, I know them. I know them, and they know me. There aren’t many left now, but those who are….they know you too, son. They were there when you were born, they watched you crawl and walk and run and speak for the first time. They watched you grow, Edward. They care about you and they don’t want to watch you die.”

Hohenheim takes a shuddering breath.

 _“I_ don’t want to watch you die. I’m far too selfish and love you far too much for that.”

Hohenheim was never a normal father, even when he was around. He didn’t take pictures of them and spoil them to death like Hughes. He didn’t go play catch in the yard with them like Uncle Yuriy or sneak them sweets before dinner like Mr. Miller down the lane.

Hohenheim made sure Ed knew how to count to ten in four languages before he was three. He read alchemy textbooks aloud like they were adventure stories and treated transmutation circles like secret maps to castles in the sky. He was quiet and reserved, didn’t often look them in the eyes and hugged them even less. He smiled sometimes, and frowned more, and they were never allowed to bother him after the door to his study was shut.

The door was often shut.

Hohenheim left them to protect them, to go slay the dragons in the castles in the sky. He forgot that snakes in the garden could be just as dangerous to them as dragons.

But every night when they were little, when Hohenheim thought Ed and Al were asleep, he’d sit in their bedroom. Sometimes he sat in the rocking chair, reading by the moonlight. Sometimes he sat on the beds beside them and brushed back their bangs, kissing their foreheads before backing out of the door.

One time, after Ed had been sick with a fever that had finally broken, Hohenheim climbed into the tiny bed and pulled Ed into his arms.

He was still there when Ed woke up the next morning.

Their mother’s love for them had been like the sun, always shining brightly, almost burning in its radiance. The absence of it nearly killed them.

Their father’s love is like the moon.

Sometimes Ed can’t see it. Sometimes it’s cloudy and quiet and muted. But as much as Ed sometimes wanted to ignore it, wanted to hate it and never glimpse it again and allow the darkness of the night to finally consume him, Ed’s always known it was there.

And when it is full, the moon’s radiance rivals even that of the sun.

“Dad,” Ed gasps, his tears soaking his father’s shirt, “Dad. _Dad._ ”

Ed feels a kiss on the top of his head, and tears that fall into his bangs.

“Oh, my Ed. Edward please, _please_ \--,”

“Dad, you _c-can’t_ \--,”

“—Forgive me.”

And then the world is red, but it’s not fire anymore.

It’s lightning.

It’s alchemy.

Ed _screams._

And then the world is gone.

000

“Wake up you stupid pupil,” a breathless voice commands. Ed feels two slim fingers along his neck.

“Teacher?” Ed asks softly, opening his eyes. “T-teacher, what--,”

Teacher suddenly crouches beside him, cupping his face gently in her hand.

But she doesn’t move quickly enough to block the sight of Briggs soldiers covering a wrinkled, grey-haired man with a sheet just a few feet away.

“No. N-no, Dad, no,” Ed begs, hopelessly reaching his right hand, his weak and pale and new hand toward the sheet. Ed can hear the metal leftover from his automail grinding and tearing into his shoulder. “Dad, _no_ \--,”

“Hush, Ed.” Teacher’s voice is thick. “Just--just hush now.”

The fire is gone. The horrible pain that had thrashed his insides has vanished.

His heart is a different story altogether.

“Y-you shitty excuse for a father!” Ed wails at the sheet. This time, Teacher doesn’t tell Ed to hush.

She just holds him as he sobs.

000

The next time Ed wakes, he’s in the hospital.

His mouth tastes like cotton and his shoulder is wrapped like a mummy. He’s dressed in scrubs he didn’t put on himself, his automail leg is missing, and his body has been sponged clean.

Somebody even brushed his hair.

With more of a struggle than Ed is willing to admit, he lifts his head. Teacher and Sig sit in chairs in the corner of the room, both sound asleep. Ed can see the outlines of Breda and Falman though the crack in the door.

Ed turns his head and finally finds his center.

Alphonse Elric, golden-haired, golden eyed Al with pale skin on his bones and red blood in his veins lies sleeping in the bed by the window. Ed can hear his deep, even breaths from across the room.

Ed gives himself a minute to stare at his little brother, at this wondrously awesome _miracle_ that has occurred. He gives himself a minute to cry, to quietly choke up the sobs he’s been bottling in for five years.

Then he tries to slip out of bed and stand up.

He falls to the floor immediately; it is a testament to how exhausted they both must be that Teacher and Sig do not wake. Instead of trying to stand on one leg, Ed crawls across the room, using the railing on Alphonse’s bed to pull himself up before slipping under the covers and wrapping his shaking arms around the tiny body.

“ _Brother_ ,” Alphonse whispers reverently, golden eyes now open and wide. “Oh, _Ed_.”

“Hi, little brother,” Ed whispers back, hugging Al tighter and kissing the crown of his head. Through the window it is dark, pitch black but for the stars twinkling in the cloudless sky. They can’t see the moon tonight because it is new. 

But the moon is still up there.

And as Ed brushes back Al’s fine long hair and wipes the tears from his eyes, Ed realizes that Dad is still there with them, too. He will always be with them, in their golden eyes and golden hair. In that scrunched up face he remembers Al making when he reads something interesting. In Ed’s laugh and his smile and in the notes he and Al write to each other in Xersian just to annoy Mustang.

In the new scars on Edward’s body, the cuts and wounds that Dad knitted back together, painstakingly and permanently tracing out one final message for Ed.

Hohenheim left them to save the world.

But _Dad_ loved them more than everything in the world.

Alphonse smiles at him then, and it takes Ed’s breath away. It has been five years since he’s seen Al smile, and time and distance allow Ed to see the thing anew. 

It’s small, yet wide and toothy, squinting his eyes and pulling his chapped lips up painfully in the corners. He has a dimple on the left side of his mouth, but not the right. Ed had forgotten about the dimple.

It’s beautiful and perfect and entirely, whole-heartedly Al, and yet—

It is _Mom’s_ smile.

_We just wanted to see our mother’s smile again._

Ed doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or sob.

Because finally, _finally_ , Ed understands that Mom never left them either. Even during the worst of thunderstorms the sun never truly goes away.

And if you wait long enough, you get to see the rainbow.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song Total Eclipse of the Heart. Lol. 
> 
> Sidenote: at the end i wanted it to be a full moon through the window because #symbolism but then i remembered there was an eclipse that day and the moon would be new for an eclipse. So, new moon instead. I tried to make it work. I kinda like it better actually. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you liked the story.


End file.
